Quentin Tarantino praises Joker: Folie à Deux as a ‘f— you to the movie audience’

Quentin Tarantino can’t get enough of the Joker’s twisted sense of humor.

The Pulp Fiction filmmaker sang the praises of director Todd Phillips‘ controversial comic book sequel Joker: Folie à Deux in an appearance on The Bret Easton Ellis podcast, opining that Phillips adopted the anarchic spirit of the main character while helming the movie.  

“Todd Phillips is the Joker. Un film de Joker, all right, is what it is. He is the Joker,” Tarantino said. “The entire concept, even him spending the studio’s money — he’s spending it like the Joker would spend it, all right? And then his big surprise gift — ha, ha! — the jack-in-the-box, when he offers you his hand for a handshake and you get a buzzer with 10,000 volts shooting you, is the comic book geeks.”

The film intentionally antagonizes fans of superheroes, movies, and studios making money, Tarantino said. “He’s saying ‘f— you’ to all of them,” he said. “He’s saying ‘f— you’ to the movie audience. He’s saying ‘f— you’ to Hollywood. He’s saying ‘f— you’ to everybody who owns any stock at DC and Warner Brothers.”

The filmmaker did not expect to enjoy the movie as much as he did, considering he wasn’t a fan of the first film beyond one standout sequence. “The first movie was just all about, as far as I was concerned, was all about the talk show scene,” he said. “But the talk show scene is one of the best scenes made in the last 20 years. Of this century, easily, easily. The whole movie was worth it for that. And to see it in a crowded theater was the way to see it.”

Tarantino’s estimation of the 2019 Joker aligned more with the skeptical fans who found it derivative of other films. “Now before that scene, I wasn’t digging the movie that much,” he said. “I was going, Well, I dunno. Is this the world we live in, that stories like Taxi Driver have to be regurgitated for comic book fodder in order to take something this seriously? Is this where we’ve come? So that was the monologue I was having with myself. And it was all really pretty f—ing one-notey, all right? For like a long, long period of time.”

The filmmaker also didn’t think much of Joaquin Phoenix‘s performance in the first movie, but was blown away by his turn in Folie à Deux. “It was for sure he was gonna win the Oscar that year,” he said. “I actually thought Leo [DiCaprio] should’ve won for Once Upon a Time,,, in Hollywood, but there was no doubt that he was gonna win, and I guess he almost should’ve won because you could see the commitment of what it took him to do it. But I didn’t love the performance that much; it was more about the commitment. I think he gives one of the best performances I’ve ever seen in my life in this movie.”

Tarantino praised the movie for its unusual use of musical numbers. “I really liked the musical sequences,” he said. “I got really caught up. I thought the more banal the songs were, the better they were. I found myself listening to the lyrics of ‘For Once in My Life’ in a way that I never heard them before.” 

The filmmaker also praised Phoenix’s vocal performance, defending the actor from critics of his unconventional singing voice. “I thought he pulled it out,” he said. “It’s the same thing that people said about — it’s different, but the same point applies — people said about what’s-his-name [Ryan Gosling] in La La Land. ‘Does he sing good?’ Well, he doesn’t sing good, but he sounds like him!”

Tarantino continued, “I actually think he sings the songs well enough in his non-singing way to commit to them as drama, where the lyrics are his monologue.”

The two-time Oscar winner also heard some of his own voice in the sequel. “As much as the first one was indebted to Taxi Driver, this seems pretty f—ing indebted to Natural Born Killers, which I wrote,” he said. “Not as as indebted as Taxi Driver, but pretty f—ing indebted.”

Tarantino was famously displeased by Oliver Stone’s adaptation of his work in that 1994 film, however, and he actually preferred Folie à Deux  to the movie he wrote. “That’s the Natural Born Killers I would have dreamed of seeing,” he said. “As the guy who created Mickey and Mallory, I loved what they did with it. I loved the direction he took. I mean, the whole movie was the fever dream of Mickey Knox. It was fantastic.”

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